


Espresso Yourself

by fuchs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Erica Reyes, Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Blushing Derek, Fluff and Humor, Hairy Derek, Laura Hale & Stiles Stilinski Bromance, M/M, Shy Derek, Wet Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 03:10:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3794458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuchs/pseuds/fuchs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>There’s a clatter and Stiles looks over the girl’s shoulder to find a guy standing behind her. He’s wearing an apron, dark to match the rest of the shop, darker still all down the middle where there’s a coffee stain spreading rapidly. He's staring at Stiles with wide blue-green eyes, and when Stiles meets his gaze he opens his mouth, closes his mouth, and then turns tail and disappears into what Stiles assumes is the kitchen.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Which is a little weird.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s not exactly the first time anyone has purposefully avoided him, but Stiles usually knows those people and they usually have a good excuse. This guy? Stiles doesn’t recognise this guy from Adam. Although he certainly wouldn’t mind roleplaying Steve.</em>
</p><p>A self-indulgent coffeeshop au turned into Laura/Stiles bromance turned into prom fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Espresso Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> I AM SO SORRY FOR THE TITLE. I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO NAME THIS THING SO I GOOGLED COFFEE PUNS AND IT ALL WENT DOWN HILL FROM THERE.

Stiles makes a startled noise when he gets slapped in the face with an umbrella. It could possibly, technically, if you squinted, be classified as a squeal, but Stiles challenges anyone to _not_ squeal as they’re splashed with frigid rain water. The person who umbrella-maimed him continues walking without a backwards glance, as if this is their personal sidewalk and anyone who gets in their way is fair game. Which is true, essentially. It’s New York.

He’s only just recovered when a bus trundles past and sprays dirty gutter water all over his legs.

Stiles wants to cry. He could probably get away with it too because he’s soaked to the bone, shiver-inducing droplets sliding down his spine, hair plastered to his forehead, and what’s a little more water to a drowned rat?

Thunder rumbles overhead and Stiles officially gives up on today.

He should be hauling ass to campus, but he isn’t used to this okay, he’s used to warm, dry, Californian weather, so he’s claiming a mental health day and going back to bed.

He makes it half a block back in the direction he came from before his fingers turn numb and he ducks under the closest awning to avoid frostbite. It’s possible he’s being slightly overdramatic but Stiles has heard the horror stories, the tales of people becoming too cold to carry on, of falling unconscious outside and dying of hypothermia before anyone can find them sprawled there in the street, and he’s not taking any chances.

Granted, those stories took place in Canada. But New York’s pretty close to Canada!

Stiles shakes himself off and takes in his surroundings. He’s standing just outside what looks like a coffee shop. It’s a tiny, hole-in-the-wall, blink and you’ll miss it sort of place, with soft lighting and dark wood furnishings. It looks cozy and comfortable and Stiles is almost getting high of the smell of freshly ground beans just standing in the doorway. It’s a no-brainer, really.

He floats inside on a coffee-scented cloud like he’s ascending to heaven above.

There’s a dark-haired girl, or woman, really, arranging muffins behind the counter and she looks up and smiles at Stiles, like an angel welcoming him through the pearly gates. A really, _really_ hot angel, possibly a Charlie’s Angel, judging from those heavy black motorcycle boots, but an angel nonetheless.

The smile Stiles gives her in return is probably relieved, or possibly deranged. Stiles doesn’t know, he can’t feel his face anymore.

There’s a clatter and Stiles looks over the girl’s shoulder to find a guy standing behind her. He’s wearing an apron, dark to match the rest of the shop, darker still all down the middle where there’s a coffee stain spreading rapidly. He's staring at Stiles with wide blue-green eyes, and when Stiles meets his gaze he opens his mouth, closes his mouth, and then turns tail and disappears into what Stiles assumes is the kitchen.

Which is a little weird.

It’s not exactly the first time anyone has purposefully avoided him, but Stiles usually knows those people and they usually have a good excuse. This guy? Stiles doesn’t recognise this guy from Adam. Although he certainly wouldn’t mind roleplaying Steve.

The girl turns back from watching the guy flee and lifts her shoulders in a shrug, seemingly as perplexed as Stiles.

“Take a seat, sweetie, we do table service. I’ll be with you in a minute,” she says.

“Th-Thanks,” Stiles chatters at her, and turns to face the rest of the shop.

He’d love to set him self up at one of the tables along the wall with the padded bench seats, to curl up around a cushion and chase the cold away. But he’s sopping, literally dripping, and he doesn’t really have the money to pay for any soft-furnishings he ruins. So he heads over to the back corner where there’s a study little table for two next to an old, polished copper boiler. It’s purely for decorative purposes and won’t actually keep him warm, but he can imagine.

He dumps his backpack and peels off his jacket, trying to rub some feeling back into his arms.

A second girl walks out of the kitchen, tall and blonde with legs for days and a rack Stiles isn’t even going to think about ogling because it looks like this girl could beat the shit out of him. The first girl raises her eyebrows.

“Don’t look at me, he’s your brother,” Blonde Bombshell says.

The guy from before trails out behind her, a new apron on over his tight black t-shirt, and stops abruptly next to the espresso machine, looking from the counter to the door to the long bench along the far wall. When he eventually spies Stiles sitting by himself in the corner the tips of his ears turn red and he busies himself with the milk frother.

Both the girls are staring at him.

Stiles has no idea what’s going on. He turns his attention to the menu.

It’s ten thirty in the morning and Stiles reckons he’s earned brunch.

He’s still shivering lightly when the dark-haired girl comes over to take his order.

“It’s really coming down out there, huh?” she says, eyeing the small puddle developing under Stiles’ wrecked Chucks. He shifts, they squelch awkwardly.

“I will never be dry _again_ ,” Stiles says emphatically and the girl throws her head back to laugh. It’s a deep, throaty sound and it does a hell of a lot more to warm Stiles up than the fake boiler.

“Not from around here?” she asks, still grinning down at him, and she sticks her pencil behind her ear, leaning one hip against the table.

“How can you tell?” Stiles wonders, kind of self-consciously, because is it that obvious that he doesn’t fit in? That obvious that he wanders circles around the streets, still getting lost trying to find his apartment even while tapping angrily at the map on his phone?

There must be something revealing in his expression because her smile loses it’s edge, becomes something smaller, more reassuring.

“You’re still indignant about the weather,” she explains, “most New Yorkers are just resigned.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll get used to it eventually,” she says, back to grinning, “and learn to buy the right shoes.”

Cue more awkward squelching.

She laughs again, bright and wide, and Stiles wishes he knew her name so he could stop calling her ‘she’ inside his head. This girl seems like a hell of a lot more than just a ‘she’.

“So where you from originally?” she asks, pulling out the chair opposite Stiles and flopping into it. It’s kind of presumptuous, really, but Stiles likes it. It makes him feel a little less cold and a little less lonely.

A giggle erupts from behind the counter and they both look over to find Espresso Guy viciously sorting sugar packets, stabbing each individual sachet into their holders with a thunderous scowl on his face, while Blonde Bombshell watches on with her knuckles stuffed in her mouth.

The girl across from him shoots them a puzzled look and Blonde Bombshell just shakes her head, her shoulders jumping.

This coffee shop is kind of strange, Stiles decides. He likes it a lot.

The girl clears her throat and Stiles snaps his gaze back to her. “Oh, um, I grew up in this one horse town in California, up in the north.”

“No way! Me too!” she exclaims, sitting forward, pulling her long hair over one shoulder. Stiles can see dark ink curling around from the back of her neck, something stark and swirly, and he tries to picture her in Beacon Hills but he can’t. She seems too big, too vivid to be held down by somewhere so small and dull.

“ _You’re_ from Cali?” he says, maybe a little bit too incredulously because she arches one sharp eyebrow at him.

“Don’t look the part?” she questions drily, one boot kicking out from under the table. Stiles just shrugs because, yes, essentially, this girl doesn’t look like your garden variety Californian native. “Well, I did take to New York very quickly.”

“Why do I get the feeling that New York took to you?”

She grins again, wolfish and dangerous and genuinely pleased, all at the same time. “You’re learning already, kid.”

Stiles huffs, because he’s not _that_ young, and she knocks her foot against his beneath the table. There’s a _crunch_ from behind the counter but Stiles doesn’t bother looking over this time.

“Believe it or not,” she continues, “I grew up running around barefoot in the Beacon Hills preserve.”

It’s a good thing Stiles hadn’t ordered yet otherwise his drink would’ve been added to the puddle on the floor.

“You’re from _Beacon Hills_?” he squawks, nearly thwacking himself in the head with his own flailing limbs. “That’s where I’m from! My dad’s the Sheriff.”

“Oh my god, Stilinski?!” The girl slumps back in her chair, raking her eyes over his face as though she’s looking at him for the first time. Then Stiles can practically see the puzzle pieces all snapping together inside her head as she tips forward again, her plush mouth dropping open. “Oh my _god_ , of course,” she hisses. “ _Stiles_ Stilinski.”

She whips around so quickly that she topples out of her chair, and then she just lies on the floor cackling madly, pointing over to the counter where Blonde Bombshell is doubled over and Espresso Guy is frozen in what appears to be horror.

“I think I’m missing something,” Stiles says to no one in particular.

“Oh, honey,” Blonde Bombshell pipes up, “you missed _a lot_.”

Espresso Guy’s eyebrows start doing interpretive dance on his forehead.

“ _Erica_ ,” he grumbles.

The dark-haired girl picks herself up and dusts off her black jeans, still snorting, then reaches down to pick up her pencil from where it rolled under the ornamental boiler.

“So what can I get you, Freckle Face?” she asks, unholy glee lighting up her eyes.

“What?” Stiles says blankly at the exact same time that Espresso Guy growls out a menacing, “ _Laura_.”

Stiles blinks and dazedly orders a breakfast sandwich.

Laura winks at him before sauntering off into the kitchen. Espresso Guy stomps after her and Erica jumps off her perch on the counter, scrambling to follow both of them.

Which leaves Stiles all alone in an otherwise empty coffee shop, catching vague snippets of a whispered conversation and trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Erica struts back out into the shop and shoots Stiles a lascivious smirk before turning her attention to cleaning the pastry display cases.

He has just enough time to work his Google magic and conjure old yearbook photos out of thin air before there’s more commotion in the kitchen and Espresso Guy comes stumbling through the door, involuntarily by the look of things.

Laura shoves a plate in his hands and Erica hands him a coffee and then they both shoo him away like he’s a particularly tenacious puppy.

He brings over Stiles’ food with the air of someone walking to the gallows.

“Hale, right?”

The coffee thunks onto the table, foam slopping over the edge, and Espresso Guy glares at his own hand in betrayal.

“Your sister, she’s Laura Hale,” Stiles continues quickly as Espresso Guy slides his sandwich in front of him with exaggerated care. “Which makes you Derek, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Derek grunts and he pulls a dishrag from his back pocket to wipe up the spill. “How’d you know?”

“I’m good with my fingers,” Stiles replies, waggling said fingers.

Derek chokes on nothing at all and bangs his elbow into the table.

“Wait, no – I mean – not!” Stiles can physically _feel_ his blush travelling all the way down his neck and under his collar. “I Googled,” he finishes weakly.

Derek concentrates on wiping down the table. Stiles picks at his sandwich.

Derek polishes the wood until it’s veritably shining then straightens up, turning and taking half a step away before he stops and swings back around to Stiles. “I should, um, I mean I’ve got work so –”

“Oh. Right. Sure. I mean, yeah,” Stiles babbles like a lunatic, trying to hide his disappointment. “Of course, that’s –”

“You’re on break, Der!” Laura calls across the shop. She and Erica are crouched behind the espresso machine like cartoon villains, like they’re trying to be subtle, like they don’t look entirely absurd. “You should stay, keep Stiles company, catch up.”

The face Derek makes is one of sheer panic, and Stiles cringes a little because it is not a look he’s unfamiliar with. He doesn’t want to force Derek into talking with him, and he sure as hell doesn’t want _Laura_ to force Derek into talking with him. He was kind of hoping that Derek would _want_ to talk to him of his own volition, just like he was hoping all throughout the two years they spent in the same building, but Derek wasn’t interested in Stiles then and it seems as if he’s just as lacking in interest now.

“It’s fine, Derek, you don’t have –”

The chair squeals as it’s dragged across the hard wood floor and then Derek’s dropping into it like a stone.

They sit.

It’s not awkward. Awkward isn’t a strong enough word to convey the atmosphere between them. _Excruciating_ might be more apt.

“You know, you’ve changed a lot since high school, with the face and the beard and the bod– yeah,” Stiles blurts inelegantly. “I didn’t even recognise you.”

Derek stills, glances up at Stiles from under his lashes. His long, dark, perfectly curled lashes. In fact every single hair on Derek’s entire face is dark and perfect, and there are a lot of them. He’s got an _actual_ beard, short and trimmed and neat, sure, but it’s still more facial hair than Stiles will ever be able to grow in his entire lifetime.

And Stiles isn’t even going to _think_ about the soft curls of chest hair peeking up through the neck of Derek’s shirt. About how it’d feel beneath his fingers, warm and fuzzy and _there_ , something to hold on to. About how Derek’s probably hairy _all over_ – fuck, he’s thinking about it.

“Stiles?”

Stiles jerks, bashes his knee on the underside of the table, and Derek’s luscious beard twitches suspiciously.

“Ow, sorry, what?”

“I said, um,” Derek pauses, clearing his throat, “you knew who I was in high school?”

“Uh, _yeah_ , dude, are you kidding? You were captain of the basketball team, and prom king, and drove a sports car. And there was that one time you corrected Mr Harris in AP Chem and he couldn’t even give you detention because you were _right_. And there was that other time you got kissed by almost the _entire_ student body when you manned the kissing booth at Senior Fete Day. And –”

Stiles stops, thinks over everything he just said, and then contemplates heading back out into the deluge and drowning himself in the gutter.

But Derek’s smiling at him, this achingly shy thing, with little crinkles at the corners of his eyes and a rosy blush riding high on his cheeks.

“ _You_ didn’t kiss me at the kissing booth,” he says quietly.

Stiles has a spontaneous coughing fit and grabs at his drink. When he’s managed to calm down a bit he looks up and finds Derek watching him.

“Yeah, ah, no. I’d kinda spent all my pocket money on prom tickets.”

Derek sobers, his smile slipping a little, and he looks down at the table, scratching at a spot with his fingernails.

“You went with Lydia Martin that year, didn’t you?”

Stiles’ eyebrows shoot up, amazed that Derek remembers who he took to prom, amazed that Derek even _noticed_ who he took to prom.

“Yes, yeah, I did.”

“Did you guys have fun?”

Stiles hesitates for a beat, shrugging a shoulder when Derek glances back up at him.

“It was alright. Lydia kind of ditched me halfway through to go hook up with Jackson Whittemore on the lacrosse pitch, so.” He shrugs again. That’s not one of his fondest memories, even if he counts Lydia as one of his closest friends now.

“That’s such _bullshit_ ,” Derek says fiercely and Stiles laughs, half stunned and half self-deprecating.

“It’s kind of par for the course considering my dating history,” Stiles mumbles. “Or lack thereof,” he tacks onto the end.

“I was going to ask you,” Derek says suddenly, and then sits up quickly like he’s shocked by his own words.

“What. When. Why. Ask me what. What?”

Stiles is as confused as Derek looks. But then Derek straightens out his shoulders and flares his nostrils.

“I was going to ask you. To be my date. To my senior prom.”

Stiles can only manage to gape at him while the whole world unravels and then rewinds itself around this new information.

“ _Holy_ fuck,” Stiles says. “And I went with _Lydia_.”

Derek jerks his shoulders almost up to his ears and there’s this sour little twist to his mouth. It absolutely does not go well with his beard.

“Ask me now.”

Derek’s eyebrows nearly merge with is hairline. “What.”

“Ask me now. Do it,” Stiles demands.

“Stiles,” Derek says incredulously, “you’re nineteen. _I’m_ twenty-one. We don’t actually go to high school anymore.”

“ _Do it_.”

“ _Fine_.” He blows out a breath and shakes his head in disbelief. “Stiles, will you go to prom with me?”

Stiles can hardly speak around his smile, but he forces out the words he’d never thought he’d say to _Derek fucking Hale_. “I’d love to.”

Behind the counter, Laura and Erica start whooping.

(The weather stays shit for the next two weeks but Stiles doesn’t care. He gets to curl up on the bench seat all warm and snuggly with his boyfriend.)

(His boyfriend also spreads out an actual paper map and spends three hours explaining the street numbering system. It’s really _not_ that fucking hard, Stiles, honestly.)

**Author's Note:**

> [come tumble with me!](http://www.mermaid-reyes.tumblr.com)
> 
> now with added prom not!fic in the comments!
> 
> now with _even more_ angsty not!fic in the comments!


End file.
